Students from diverse academic backgrounds came together for the University of UH inaugural undergraduate CyberInfrastructure Summer Immersion Program (CI-SIP) June 2–27. Ten students participated virtually across the state of Hawaiʻi, Guam and the continental U.S. and represented UH Mānoa, Boston University and the University of Guam.
Two newly hired facilitators served as peer mentors, guiding students in applying cyberinfrastructure resources and methods to their research projects. Students met daily to brainstorm and refine research topics, participated in Jetstream2 training, and completed an introduction to high performance computing (HPC), which included an onboarding session for Koa, the UH HPC cluster. Additionally, students explored National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded ACCESS resources along with open-source platforms such as Anaconda.
“The CI-SIP program this year was a remarkable showcase of what’s possible when talented students are given the tools, mentorship and compute power to explore complex problems,” said program lead Alexander Stokes, assistant professor of cellular and molecular biology at the UH Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine. “From flood awareness apps and environmental dashboards to protein modeling, AI-driven performance forecasting, and bilingual science tools, the projects reflected a stunning diversity of topics—many of which addressed challenges in health and sustainability. While not every project focused on AI, several used high-performance computing resources like Jetstream2 and UH’s Koa cluster to push the limits of data exploration—and many students expressed a strong desire to go even deeper into AI applications.”
Individual projects
Students worked with large language models and gained skills in data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning through self-paced learning modules. Through their individual projects, students explored applications of these tools in cyberinfrastructure frameworks.
“I love creating things and seeing a final product,” said UH Mānoa Information and Computer Sciences undergraduate student Chiara Duyn when speaking about her flood awareness web application project. “I also wanted to learn more about how stream heights and tides can affect flooding on the island while also helping others out.”
Recordings of the students’ final presentations can be found at the UH Hawaiʻi Data Science Institute’s YouTube channel at go.hawaii.edu/MSr.
“It was a joy to witness students take ownership of their work, support each other’s growth, and step confidently into the world of cyberinfrastructure-powered research,” said Stokes.
The CI-SIP program is funded by NSF’s Strengthening the Cyberinfrastructure Professionals Ecosystem Cyberinfrastructure Pacific Professionals award, which supports the enhancement of cyberinfrastructure professional training for science research, education and practice in the Hawaiʻi-Guam-Pacific region.
